Souls Between

“How could this possibly be only the beginning?” 

Ana is standing at the head of her war table, hands clenched into fists as her pale eyes stare Reaver down on the other side of the table. He is doing a very good impression of a very unconcerned individual, though perhaps he is truly not afraid to invoke her ire like the rest of the advisors in the room. He is a bit devil-may-care after all. 

“I think I spoke rather clearly the first time,” his tone is biting, and his yellow wolf eyes flash a dangerous shade as he regards her aggressive stance and demeanor. The mage himself is standing casually against the table and twiddling a bit of his cloak around in his fingers, not a care in the world: typical. 

“There can’t possibly be more of them, we’re overrun!” this time one of her generals speaks out, probably afraid that his Queen is going to lunge across the table and strangle the man that came to their rescue not weeks before. The greyed man that spoke is scarred and battered, evidence that he’s been fighting hard alongside those he commands just as they all have. Only Reaver remains suspiciously unmarred. 

“There are always more,” Reaver begins, putting up a hand when Anastasia moves to interrupt him again, “In the Aether, in your streets, and in your tents now. Every last one of you knows it the same as I, and denying it any further is childish. The enemy is not only the hungering mass of Aemons at your door. It is the corruption that crawls under all of your skin, and in your dragons.”

When he is finished speaking he glances over towards the great white dragon breathing laboriously in the far corner of the great hall. Ana’s gaze follows his and she resist the nearly overwhelming urge to walk over and strangle him.  Of course they know it, they’ve been seeing it happen for weeks. Her own dragon is suffering and there is nothing she can do but watch as the life is taken from him. Aurora looks at her woefully, trying to project comfort and failing. He defended her life with his own, and she will never forgive herself for putting him in that position. 

“What can we do?” She says instead, looking at Reaver with a desperation she feels in her very core. What can they do? Her ideas ran dry weeks ago when they failed to defeat the Aemons even after the Aether Guard showed up. With their combined force they held them back, but the creatures at their door are relentless and it’s only a matter of time before even those born to fight them fall. She thought they were hopeless before, Ana did not truly think they could sink to this level. 

“Nothing,” comes the flat response from Reaver, and she looks up at him in shock. 

“Nothing?!” Ana repeats, incredulous even though she suspected the answer. 

“There is absolutely nothing we can do,” Reaver repeats, a bored frown on his features as he says it. His slender fingers continue twirling the edge of his cloak between the digits and finally Ana has had enough. 

With a strength she didn’t know she had left she marches over to him and slaps the fabric from his hands, the snap echoing in the suddenly silent war room. To his credit Reaver barely reacts, but his frown does deepen when he looks down at her finally. 

“Since when do you give up?” Ana asks him, tone accusatory as she lets her pale eyes burn into his golden ones. She hopes her stare conveys every emotion she’s feeling for once, and she doesn’t bother trying to hide any of it. It must because he looks slightly taken aback and raises an eyebrow at her. 

“Give up? This isn’t even my-” Ana steps in his personal space further, and braces her arms on either side of him on the table drawing up to her full height to cage him in. It shuts him up, even though she’s a good half a head shorter than he is. 

“Don’t you dare try to tell me this isn’t your fight. That you’ll just disappear until the dust settles and adapt. That may have worked before, I may have let it happen before, but this is different,” she starts, fury lacing her every word as she effectively corners him at her table of war, “I will hunt you down to the ends of this world if you run Reaver. If you turn your back on the people that are dying here, if you let this world fall and crumble in your shadow, again,, so help me I will make sure you do not survive another year. I do not care what magic you have inside you I will rip it from you myself.”

Reaver stares at her incredulously, eyes wide as he regards her words. There isn’t fear in them, she’s not sure he’s really afraid of anything truth be told, but he seems to be considering something in them all the same. Ana still has him boxed against the table and she’s painfully aware of the stares and uncomfortable tension in the room now. Sure, he could easily escape this cage of her arms but he seems to be staying put out of some sort of respect for her efforts. 

Moments pass, perhaps even full minutes in this almost awkward silence, before Reaver heaves a deep sigh and lets his shoulders sag. 

“He would have found me if I ran anyways,” he relents eventually, and he braces his hands against Ana’s forearms as he slowly but steadily pushes her away from him. Tension gone from her frame, she can’t do anything but let him guide her to the nearest chair and push her into it. She blinks up at him in confusion, voicing her thoughts out loud before she can find the will to stop herself.

“He?” she asks simply, and Reaver nods, sitting on the floor in front of her. Ana looks down at him and the confusion on her features deepens into a fully formed scowl. Around them the advisors and generals gather, apparently eager to listen in now that the tension has broken. 

“These are not random attacks,” Reaver begins, solemn and serious for probably once in his life, “And they are not going to stop.”

Ana suspected as much, but isn’t quite sure how to articulate this so she simply nods silently. The fury is gone from her features and she just stares on blankly in the hopes he’ll elaborate as the whispers in the room build on this new information. 

“You’ve never considered in all your years, plentiful may they be,” Ana nearly scoffs at the thinly veiled insult but has the mind to keep silent in an effort to keep him talking, “that for all it resembles the world above, the world below may more similar to yours than you know?”

“More similar?” Ana pauses thoughtfully, Reaver’s clearly trying to help her to her own conclusion but she’s not quite getting it. He sighs and runs a hand through his strangely colored hair.

“It’s more than just similar even, it’s like looking in a mirror really. The same villages, the same mountains, hell even the same roads!” Anastasia is not sure why he’s being so dodgy, and annoyance creeps into her tone when she speaks again.

“What do similar roads have to do with anything?” She asks, and some of her advisors seem to be piecing something together that she isn’t because they start to go pale. 

“The same roads that lead to what? The same cities,” he urges her, suddenly speaking frantically now and she has a sense of dread in the pit of her stomach that she isn’t sure from where it came.

“Don’t be ridiculous, the Aether doesn’t have any cities!” She declares, rolling her eyes.

“Have you ever been there?” Reaver questions, the seriousness of his tone stopping her short. She considers him for a moment before answering slowly. 

“...no.”

“Where does the High Dragon road lead?” Reaver asks because apparently now it’s time to ask about the layout of the Radiant City. Angrily Ana stands, towering over him as she practically shouts her answer:

“My damn castle!”

Reaver nods and stands, and Ana can’t help but notice every single other member of her guard in the room has gone deathly pale and silent. There isn’t even a whisper as they hang onto Reaver’s next words, practically whispered as he glares her down. 

“And who do you think sits on that throne in the castle in the Aether?”

Ana stops short, feeling the blood draining from her face even before he’s finished asking his question. During the scene Aurora has come to stand behind her, his hulking form no longer the comforting presence it once was. A chill creeps up her spine as her dragon’s suddenly unfamiliar breath washes over her neck, and the voice that spills from his maw is nothing like the one she is used to. It almost laughs when it says the words she never even considered in all her life. 

“An Aether King, of course.”

- Hastily transcribed during a War Meeting in the Radiant Castle by an unkown but trustworthy scribe, 3rd Era.